The present invention relates to an LSI development support system for generating design data for an LSI (large scale integrated circuit) and documents therefor such as an operation manual and a product specification.
There has been a known technique for enhancing efficiency in document preparation by dividing documents into their components for storage in a database and extracting and synthesizing some of the stored components for preparation of a document. In the known document preparation supporting system, a document is established by extracting document components requested by the user from a database and synthesizing those extracted components. The document is then laid out in a given format and the result is outputted (see Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 5-101054).
In conventional LSI development methods, the design of a product and the preparation of documents therefor such as an operation manual and a product specification are performed in separate, different process steps. Thus, even if modifications to the specifics of a product have been reflected in design data for the LSI, such modifications may not be reflected in documents therefor, which may cause inconsistency to arise between the LSI design data and the documents. Another problem with the known LSI development methods is that the documents for the product are completed late after completion of the product. These problems cannot be settled by the document preparation supporting system mentioned.